6

The Escape

“Hey! Hey, wake up! Come on, we have to get out of here!” I yell. “Faelin!”

He opened his eyes, very slowly. “Huh?”

“Wake up!” He seems to notice me in full view.

“What, wha--” he begins to get up but falls back to the cool concrete floor, the bullet wound in his stomach painfully telling Faelin it was there.

“Careful. Raden shot you,” I tell him. “Are there any medical supplies in here?”

“Wait, wait. I saw you get shot. You were dead!” He exclaims.

“I don’t know what happened. I just woke up.” I pause before saying, “Raden’s gone.”

“He escaped.” I say. Faelin casts his glance down, where I’d been checking his wounds not ten minutes ago. “We need to get out of here.”

“Hold on,” he goes, grabbing my arm. “What connection do you have with my father? You seem to know him.”

I purse my lips. “That’s not something to talk about right now. C’mon, we need to go.”

Faelin nods. I help him to stand up and walk to the small window. It was more of an opening, actually. There was no glass to block stormy weather from getting in, so it was cold and the stone was stained and broken down from years of rain, snow, and wind. I let his arm go and watch as he steadies himself and opens his wings. 

“Oh, my God,” I say as I look at a clean hole in his left wing. He turns and looks at the wound. “He shot you twice?”

Faelin examines his wing before saying, “He doesn’t want us escaping.”

“Well, I’m not staying here.” I say, “I’ll get you up there.”

“What?” He says incredulously.

“I’ll lift you up. You can’t be that heavy.” I crouch down and cup my hands together. “Go on.”

He steps in my hand warily. I start standing as he reaches up toward the opening.  Once he gripped the cement, I push his legs in. Faelin turns around.

“Now you,” he said breathlessly. Faelin dropped his hands and I held them firmly. I hesitated. “It’s fine. I can do it.”

He pulled me up the ledge slightly, and when I was close enough, I let go and grab onto the wall to pull myself instead. Once I’m up next to Faelin, I look down to see the fall.

“Oh, my God.” We look over the edge and there is a huge drop. It had to be at least fifty feet down to the ground, and that was infested with demons. by Raden’s soldiers.

“Looks like I need to show you how to transform right now.” Faelin says to me. I look at him.

“What?”

“I need you to look at me and think of nothing else but transforming into armor with wings.” He grabs my arms and looks at me. I stare into his deep black eyes and focus on the wings. I feel a strong wind surround us and a white light. When my sight comes back, I’m staring at Faelin and he’s staring back. “You did it,” he tells me.

I look at myself to see white iron armor that covered about half my chest and my forearms, as well as iron leggings. I am sheathed in feathery black wings. “Well, how do I fly, then?” I ask.

“Just think. Move yourself and think. It’ll come as an instinct.” I nod and do as he says to. The wings start to move behind me and I feel a strange sensation from something not familiar with my human body. I started to hang out of the window a bit, then I pushed off. Flying felt sort of like swimming through the air. It came easily to me. 

“Come here,” I said to Faelin. “I’ll catch you.” He gave me a wary look before moving toward the edge. 

“Are you sure?” He asks.

“You can’t fly, can you? If you wanna leave, this is how,” I tell him. I held out my arms to catch him. Faelin jumped, grabbing my hand just as he was about to fall. Instinctively, he unfurled his wings to catch himself. “Whoa, there. Careful, now.”

“Don’t you be telling me to be careful! I saved you, remember?” Faelin said, exasperated.

“Yes, and then I saved you, and so on…” I told him. “An eye for an eye.”

“Screw you and your reasoning.”

I feigned hurt. “Ouch,” I said.

Faelin smirked and rolled his eyes. “Let’s get moving, I don’t like the atmosphere here.” I said. “Hold on,” I told him while tightening my grip on his hand. I felt him hold tighter, too. I started to flap my wings forward, faltering a bit and dropping a couple feet. After regaining composure, I moved again and flew much more smoothly. “Are you afraid?” I yelled over the wind. Faelin was looking down to the ground with a scarce look on his face. He shook his head violently.

“N-no. It’s just weird to be flying without actually flying, you know?” He said.

“Well, no. But I’ll take your word for it.”

I saw the wall of the castle and the snow-covered ground outside. It was beyond me how the snow didn’t fall inside the fortress-like perimeter of the castle. I flapped my wings faster, careful not to hit Faelin. I resisted the urge to drop him and cover my arms from the cold. Puffs of vapor came out in front of me from my breaths.

“Cold?” He asked. I look down at him. He was almost equally as unclothed as me, with all of the tears in his long sleeve shirt and black pants. He kind of looked like an escaped prisoner--who was dressed well. Faelin’s scruffy, medium length black hair was bloodstained and knotted. I’m sure mine was too.

“There,” he pointed with his free arm to the edge of the wall. “There aren’t any guards outside at this time of night. What an idiot my father is,” he said, chuckling.

“So, where are we gonna go after we do get out?” I inquired.

“Well,” he told me. “I was thinking we could hunker down in the Forest for awhile. Wait out the search, ‘cause he’ll no doubt be searching.”

I glanced down at him. “I need to find my friends. Then we need to find the Empress and her daughters. They were captured.”

“The Empress? That woman who owns a village across from the Forest? Doesn’t she have a name, or do you just call her ‘the Empress’ all the time?”

“So many questions,” I moaned. “Yes, yes, and no one  really knows her name, so yes.” He nodded.

“Land here.” I landed--roughly--on the cold ground just outside of the wall.

“Geez, how did they not see us?” I thought out loud to myself. 

“Dunno. They’re crazy fighting machines, but still idiots.” Faelin told me. “Let’s walk from here. We’ll go inside the woods and walk in far enough that we can’t see the castle, okay? We’ll search for your friends after we heal and we can both fly.” Just as he said that, the wings on my back disappeared with a puff of air. A single white feather was left on the ground in between us. Faelin picked it up and looked at it before putting it in his pocket.

“Alright, then. Let’s go,” I say and start walking. He follows a step or two behind me. We walked for a few minutes before Faelin cried out.

“Rose! Duck!” I heard behind me and crouched down in time for an arrow to whizz past my head. I ran to a rock  near to us and Faelin followed behind me.

“What was that?” I asked.

“False alarm. One of the guards saw us.”

“I thought you said that the guards weren’t out this late.”

“I guess my dad’s being extra careful. Watch your back, Rosalie.” I nodded and walked into the edge of the woods.

Treading through the snow for what seemed like hours, Faelin and I stayed silent. Finally, he touched my arm and gestured to a small clearing, looking behind us to check the view on the castle.

“Completely gone. They’d have to search for quite a while to find us out here. Can you help me build a fire?” I nodded and walked to gather wood. When I had a few large branches, I walked back to the clearing and placed them down in the structure to build an efficient fire. Faelin walked over with some twigs and a piece of flint, by the looks of it.

“By the way, Faelin…” I addressed him while I watched him try to start it.

“Hm?” He said, still looking intently at the pile.

“Did you call me Rose earlier, when the guard saw us?” I asked.

He glanced at me for a split second. “Yeah. I hope it’s okay. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing and Rosalie is just too hard to say all the time.”

“Alright. Well, if you’re gonna start calling me Rose, what can I call you? After all, Faelin is quite a hassle, also.”

Faelin smirked. “My friends call me Fae.”

“Alrighty, then. Nice to meet you, Fae,” I said while holding my hand in the direction of him. He grabbed it and looked at me, still smirking.

“A pleasure, Rose.” I laughed a bit.

Suddenly, a spark shot up from the pit of sticks and hit my in the arm.

“Ow,” I jerked my hand back and examined the burn.

“Fire’s going,” he stated. I glared at him, holding back a chuckle. “Here. Let me see that,” he said, taking my forearm in his hands. They were warm, contrary to the weather and snow falling all around us.

For the first time since I met Fae, I noticed how handsome he really was. His obsidian-black hair was just the right shaggy, falling over his forehead, ears, and neck. His skin was olive colored, the kind of pale that sort of shined in the right light. He was slender, and his muscles were slightly toned, a sign of strength, but not body-builder strength. And his face. His face was beautiful, to say the least. His eyes were dark blue and his mouth curved in an almost ever-present smirk. His lips were full.

“What are you staring at?” He asked, pulling me out of my reverie. 

“Nothing. I see you got the fire going.”

“Yep. Come on, there’s a perfect sitting tree over here.” Fae grabbed my hand and led me over to a thick oak tree with a Rose-and-Fae sized dent that’d work perfectly.

I sat down next to him. I shivered, covering my bare arms with my hands. Fae moved closer to me and pulled me into his warmth. I pulled my knees up to my chest and leaned into him.

“So,” I said, breaking the silence. “Where was your sister during all of this?”

“Nelia?” He scoffed. “She’s not my sister. That’s the thing that that maid gave birth to. I’m my mother’s son, she’s my father’s daughter. I hate her.” I frowned. “She was probably locked up in her room or something. I don’t keep tabs on her.” I nodded.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.” I said.

“It’s okay. I don’t often get to talk about my feelings since my mother died.”

I nodded again, drowsily. I laid my head on Fae’s shoulder, curling up next to him. My eyes closed.

“I watched you, you know,” I heard him say. “I watched you grow up from the edge of the Forest.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I always knew there was something about you. When my father ordered me to capture you, I didn’t want to, but then I knew he wanted something from you. The king does not go to such extents for a simple girl, so I knew you were special. Then I found out that you were the niece of Lorn Star, the last legendary Etheran. It made you all the more appealing to save in my eyes.”

“Thank you, Fae…” I say, drowsing off slowly. I feel him smile against me. 

“You’re welcome. Now sleep.”

I fell into the first peaceful sleep I’d had in a long time. I didn’t dream.